Titles & Covers

Distracted by the remodel, as well as a couple weeks of intense boy issues related to sports and academics, I stopped writing on Shey’s book. I couldn’t focus on anything but getting well and through the crisis, but an email from my editor yesterday reminded me that I can’t be distracted. I can’t allow myself to lose my mojo. I have contracts and deadlines and Shey’s book has been slotted for July 2010 and my editor needs the book soon.

That means I have to write, and fortunately, yesterday I did write. It took me from 9 am until 6 pm but I slogged through until I hit fifteen pages. That’s a long day at my desk for only fifteen pages, but pages are pages and it’s progress which I desperately need.

My editor has also asked for any cover concept or title ideas for Shey’s book to be able to present at the meeting next week and I’ve nothing for her. I can describe Mac’s room (grown up safari theme with a black and white faux zebra rug, pale green walls, and three black and white framed prints of a giraffe against the savannah, an extreme close up of a bull elephant, and then a sweet shot of a baby elephant peeping from his mother’s legs). I can tell her that my son Jake wants his new room done in a Seattle Seahawk theme. I can talk about my Hawaii house and how I’ve ordered nursery furniture for when I spend the summer there. But I can’t picture anything for Shey’s story.

Now, I’m writing it, and I’m loving it and I teared up twice yesterday when writing one particular passage that involves her oldest son, but the sexy, fun, flirty packaging? Not a clue. I write from the inside out. I write from Shey’s heart and it’s not a sexy, fun, flirty heart at the moment. Her heart is a mother’s heart and she’s worried about her boys.

Of course there will be sexy, flirty moments, and there’s the sexiest guy yet in this book. Dane Kelly is a gorgeous, gorgeous, male in his prime. A former bullriding champ, he now raises bucking bulls on his Palo Pinto County ranch and he’s Shey’s first love. Back then she was too young for him but they’re both single now and there’s still the same crazy chemistry, only having lost his five year old son, he’s not looking for another family, much less a family with three teenage boys.

And that, in a nutshell, is what I’m working on. Have any ideas for a cover? Got any fun, sexy, flirty title suggestions? Or just want to chat? Well, post a comment below and you’ll have a chance to win another colorful sarong from Hawaii, a signed copy of the mass market edition of Flirting with Forty, and some yummy chocolate macadamia nuts (plus lots of JP reader goodies). The contest will run through tomorrow night, Thursday night, midnight and I’ll post the winner’s name Friday morning.

So talk to me, brainstorm some ideas for me, or just keep me company while I pound away on my novel, and with some luck and hard work I’ll have a great new, novel out in 2010!